Additional divisional railway manager bribery case: CBI seizes Rs 1.28 cr from accused contractors

New Delhi, Jan 18 (PTI) The CBI has seized Rs 1.28 crore cash during searches at the premises of contractors accused of allegedly bribing an additional divisional railway manager posted in Guwahati, officials said Wednesday.

Additional divisional railway manager Jitendra Pal Singh and six others, including a middleman and a hawala operator, were earlier arrested in the Rs 50-lakh bribery case.

The CBI carried out searches in Siliguri and Cooch Behar at the premises of contractors Bishnu Gupta and his brother Suresh Gupta and another contractor Dilip Ghosh leading to the recovery of Rs 1.28 crore in cash, officials said.

With this, the total seizure has reached Rs 1.75 crore cash and the bribe amount of Rs 50 lakh, they said.

Singh, a 1997-batch Indian Railways Service officer, was arrested after a person identified as Hari Om was caught while allegedly accepting the bribe on behalf of the officer.

“It was alleged that the accused (Singh) had entered into a conspiracy to show undue favours to private contractors for awarding contract agreements, preparing measurement book, processing running account bills, early release of payment against pending bills and for the ongoing work of construction in Northeast Frontier Railway as well as for the early release of security deposits and bank guarantees,” a CBI spokesperson said in a statement.

The probe agency had alleged that Singh regularly demanded and accepted bribes from various contractors when he was posted as chief engineer, construction, in New Jalpaiguri.

The bribe amount was routed through contractor Shyamal Kumar Deb who used to channelise it through Delhi-based hawala operator Vinod Kumar Singhal, also arrested in the case.

“Searches were conducted at the premises of ADRM and others in various locations, including in Delhi, Narora, Guwahati, Siliguri and Aligarh, which led to the recovery of approximately Rs 47 lakh cash, laptops and several incriminating documents,” the spokesperson had said on Sunday.

The agency has also arrested Deb, the contractor who arranged the money, and Yogendra Kumar Singh, the driver of Hariom, Dilawar Khan, and Sanjeet Ray, both cashiers at the hawala shop in the national capital.